


Source and Transit

by marsbrover



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Gen, Road Trip, hardacre, masham
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:36:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsbrover/pseuds/marsbrover
Summary: Post CoE; no marriage occurred, thank goodness.My friends! I've taken this body of work and started converting it into an original novel - new characters, different location, and a different kind of crime solving. If you're interested in following the progress of that project, sign up for email updates at carlingmars.com.





	1. A Favor for Hardacre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Hardacre is very non-canon because I couldn't remember much about him, so do with that what you will.

“Men are terrible.”

Robin threw the file for the client who had just left on the desk. Her left ring finger, naked for the past ten months, had not gone unnoticed by the many aggrieved husbands and boyfriends who came through. It seemed that lately, their clients were willing, even eager, to pay for longer surveillance contracts on women who did nothing more scandalous than have a second drink with dinner.

“If he asks me to talk through his case at his one more time, I’m sacking him.”

Strike chuckled. He’d had a feeling this would happen. Indeed, he was finding it difficult to remember what the boundaries were of their own relationship. With no Matthew and multiplying clients, pub lunches were becoming routine. Popping into the Tottenham often turned into dinner. Since Robin had taken over the glorified bedsit above the office after Strike moved into a small but quiet flat in Catford, it seemed that he needed to go upstairs almost weekly. She’d left surveillance equipment in her bag, or had been going over a file late at night. He’d seen her with hair still wet from the shower, occasionally dripping delicately onto her top.

He found himself thinking far too often about what would happen if he reached to brush the droplets from her shoulder.

“... and Farmer John as well. I think he was trying to ask me if my - if I’d ever had any, you know, surgeries.” She gestured vaguely towards her figure. “I don’t know why any of them would think, knowing as much as I do about them, they have any bloody chance with me.”

“Maybe we should get you a fake engagement ring,” Strike said thoughtfully. “Though we’d have to get you a fake fiance to match.”

Robin looked as though she were about to say something for a moment, then turned to tap some pages that had fallen askew back into the case folder, leaning forward onto the desk. Strike swallowed and busied himself with the kettle.

“We might get a break from them anyway - Hardacre’s called.” Strike fiddled unnecessarily with the cups, inspecting the leaves as though they comprised a miniscule crime scene. “He’s got a lieutenant suspected of killing her captain, but he’s having trouble getting enough on her through, ah, approved means. Seems top brass aren’t altogether that interested in getting press for high-ranking officers offing each other.”

Robin grinned. “Perhaps Venetia Hall should make a new friend.”

“I always liked her. Very businesslike.” Strike finally turned to hand Robin her tea and sat gently on the couch. It still farted.

“If we say yes, we’ll need to take the train to Edinburgh in the next day or two,” Strike said, sipping his tea and grimacing. Somehow, in all his fidgeting, he had managed to make not tea but hot water, slightly tinted by leaves. “I think we can afford to hire someone to do surveillance on Librarian and Plastic while we’re away. Maybe Shanker. I bloody well like making actual money.”

Robin’s return to the office had come with a robust surge of clients, who often came for Strike but stayed for Robin. Rich men who wanted endless pictures of their wives kissing other men had allowed Strike to finally pay off his debts. It was strange, having extra cash after being skint so many years. No debts, no date expecting him to take her to restaurants where even the soup was exorbitantly priced. He could take the occasional cab without getting back into overdraft. He could pay his rent. It was very, very strange.

Robin’s face laid bare her excitement. It had been nothing but trophy wives and tennis instructors for months.

“When’s the next train?”

xxx

Robin had hardly even been home since the wedding, and the thought of being anywhere but London, doing anything but sipping tea while watching the door of Plastic’s favorite spa, was intoxicating. Even going to a pub that wasn’t the Tottenham (for Robin thought that between Strike and Hardacre, going to the pub was inevitable) seemed luxurious. She couldn’t say why she hadn’t tried to take any time off after the wedding - Strike certainly seemed anxious that she know he was glad to have her back, in his way - but perhaps time alone with her thoughts was the last thing she wanted. The cool, collected resolve she had felt leaving the ring on the altar had faltered somewhat on the way back to London, and she had spent many nights alone in her bedsit, replete with emptiness. She knew - most of the time - that she had made the right choice, but that didn’t make it any easier to come home to an empty room.

She hoped Strike hadn’t noticed how many times she had bought him an extra pint so he would stay with her longer. She had only recently started to believe him when he said the rape didn’t make her seem weak; she did not want him to start believing that she should be pitied. Between the long hours of surveillance and the increased office work they shared, Robin still hadn’t had much time to make real friends besides Strike. She’d had a few fun evenings out with Wardle, his wife, April, and her burlesque friends when a favor needed asking, but those evenings had yet to turn into dinners or even coffees. Since her university career had been cut off so abruptly, she knew not to depend on any of those friends, either.

A strange part of the job was that she knew more about the clients and her surveillance subjects than anyone in her real life or, she thought, than anyone in theirs. It was a strange, living in half-intimacies that pushed her farther and farther from human contact.

Strike hadn’t talked much about dating since the wedding, for which Robin was quietly thankful. His inexplicably beautiful girlfriends, obtained seemingly so easily, would have only made Robin more cognizant of her solitude. She could tell when he was going to meet a woman, but the Italian suit had come to the office less frequently in recent months. She wasn’t sure whether that meant he had reached the lazy stage of a relationship or that he had simply entered a dry spell. Sometimes she thought she spent too much time thinking about Strike’s sartorial choices, but then again, what else was there to do? She needed more in life than work and studying things for work.

A few days in Edinburgh would provide a change, she thought. She would make sure it did.

xxx

The train had turned out to be booked, except, of course, for first class tickets, so that Thursday morning saw them loading backpacks into the boot of the Land Rover. Strike had claimed that the parking pass for the smelly old car was an office expense and refused to let Robin attempt street parking.

“This is London, not Masham,” Strike had grunted, pushing pound notes towards the lot cashier. “I know how much you make and it’s not enough to have your car towed weekly.”

It was a long drive up the M1, and Robin had resolved that they would not, for once, be stuck eating cheap hamburgers and drinking terrible coffee. She had talked Strike into letting Shanker cover her afternoon surveillance and had packed up what she thought of lovingly as Real Food: apples, sandwiches with identifiable ingredients, biscuits, and two thermoses of creosote-colored tea. She had been pestering Strike into eating more vegetables, and it was almost as though he were transferring weight to her; as his belly protruded a bit less and his stump felt a bit less harassed, she regained the bloom in her cheeks and roundness to her hips that had been drained from her. Seeing her healthy again, Strike marveled at the extent to which Matthew had been like a tapeworm in those last months, taking and taking and giving nothing.

Strike noted Robin’s grip tightening on the wheel as they neared Leeds. He realized they were only about an hour from Masham. Robin had barely spoken of home since July, let alone left the city. He waited another twenty minutes before speaking.

“Robin.” She stared resolutely forward, her hands gripping the wheel even more fiercely than normal - he almost thought she might leave a perfect imprint of her fingerprints there. “Robin, we should stop in Masham.”

“We’ve got plenty of petrol and we’re on a schedule,” she said primly, not even glancing at the fuel gauge.

“When’s the last time you saw your mum?”

“When’s the last time you saw Lucy?”

“Robin.” Strike rubbed his eyes.

“Cormoran.”

“You’re being a child, you know.”

Robin grimaced. She wasn’t trying to be petulant, but lately whenever she spoke to her mother, she could hear the concern in her voice. She had been a victim before and had resolved she wouldn’t do it again. Her mother’s solicitude felt cloying, like being gently drowned in syrup.

“Maybe she’ll be better in person.”

Robin glanced at Strike, her surprise palpable. Had she told him any of that before? There had been a few nights, at the pub till closing after a long day, when she’d had one too many. A sign approached: 30 kilometres to Masham.

“I can come with you, or I can bugger off for a few hours. Whatever you want.”

Sometimes she hated him for this, for his kindness. For his perceptiveness.

18 kilometres. She sighed and pulled out her phone.

“You do it. She likes you.”

Strike grinned.

xxx

Robin’s house was exactly as Strike had imagined, down to the gigantic slobbering dog, the source of the Land Rover’s permanent musk. He hadn’t exactly gotten a chance to spend time in Masham the last time he’d been here - Robin had commandeered Shanker, Strike’s ride back to London, immediately upon leaving the church. They’d been halfway to London before he understood what had happened, about the time that Robin’s face began to turn stony. Her house had a distinct smell, one that Strike was sure felt like home to Robin. Having moved around as much as he had as a child and having as many men turnstile in and out, he had never had something smell like home. Not like this.

Linda had been overjoyed to see them, even hugging Cormoran and whispering her thanks into his ear. She demanded that they let her feed them, and he found himself being ushered into a tidy but somewhat flustered kitchen. He sat at the table and propped up his leg while Robin leaned on the cabinets.

“What horrible thing happened that brought me such good luck?” Linda and Robin, to Strike’s amusement, unconsciously shook their hair out of their faces at the same time.

“Oh, you know. Dead body. The usual.” Robin smiled at Rowntree snuffling at her boots. Her mother made a disapproving clucking noise.

“Really, Cormoran, I think you’re rubbing off on her. ‘The usual.’” Linda, looking not the least bit disapproving, flicked a dish towel towards Robin.

“I try to set her right, but you try telling her what to do,” he said, rubbing his knee. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out surreptitiously.

Not surreptitiously enough.

“Who’s that?” Robin looked suspiciously at the phone.

“Hardacre,” Strike said gruffly. “Can’t get us lodging till tomorrow night.”

Robin glared openly at Strike. “I’m sure.”

Linda clapped her hands together, her face brightening.

“You’ll stay here! Oh, what fun. I’ll make sure Martin comes home for dinner tonight, and I’ll make up one of the other boys’ beds for you, Cormoran. Just think, this morning I had no idea whether you remembered where we lived and now you’re sleeping over!” She plopped down a plate of sausages in front of Strike and spirited away up the stairs.

Robin huffed.

“What?” Strike had become adept at speaking through a mouthful.

“What do you mean, what? You texted him. I can’t believe you.” She crossed her arms and glared towards the ceiling.

“Come off it,” Strike said, swallowing. “You took the M1. The M6 would’ve been faster.”

“And you’re criticizing my driving now! I really-- you’re so-- why I put up with--” she sputtered.

“Hey now,” Strike said, smiling down at his plate. “We can leave if you’re really set on it. Stay in a Travelodge. It’ll definitely be as comfortable as sleeping in your own bed. And we can get McDonald’s for dinner, keep our tradition alive.”

She huffed again, not taking her eyes from the ceiling. Strike waited quietly, refraining even from eating more of the sausages.

“Fine,” she said, after a lengthy pause. “Fine. But we’re leaving first thing tomorrow.” She seemed to relax a little, the look on her face seeming less like anger and more like not wanting to have ceded her position.

“Got it,” Strike said, stabbing another sausage. “Whatever you say.”

There was silence for a moment as he chewed.

“You’re going to show me around, though, right? Give me the Robin Ellacott origins tour.”

She sighed and sat next to him.

“After I eat.”

xxx

Masham was small, quiet. Pastoral. Strike was even more impressed, seeing where she came from, at the way Robin had handled everything that had come her way. Even as they meandered along the streets, he could feel tension radiating off of her as she tried, valiantly, to give a Matthew-free version of the tour.

“This is the post office.”

“Town square.”

“This is where they found some bones,” Robin said, waving vaguely. Strike turned to her quizzically. “Oh, you know. Old ones. I don’t know.”

“You can tell me about him, if you want. If it’ll help.”

She sighed. She knew that, without Matthew, the tour lost about two-thirds of its available stops. And, if truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to forget him, not entirely. She had grown up, become an adult with him, and they did have good times to look back on. Robin still felt instinctively happy when she passed the fountain where he had proposed, until she remembered why it had been a wonderful moment. She drank more often now. She thought she understood Strike a little better, too - he’d had fifteen years of London memories to walk through after Charlotte. They drank together more often now.

“This-- we had our first kiss here,” she said, gesturing, though at what Strike couldn’t quite tell. She was speaking quietly now, but less robotically. “I was still in school then. I thought he was--”

“Fit?” Strike suggested. Robin laughed, her shoulders relaxing a bit.

“Yeah, all right. He was pretty fit. Cutest boy at school, if we’re being honest,” she said, a small smile sneaking around her lips. “And he definitely knew it.”

“He, uh, seemed that way,” Strike said, suddenly very interested in a bird sitting in a nearby tree. “That. Matthew. Yes.”

Robin grinned and tried to move into Strike’s field of vision.

“I can’t believe it! Cormoran Strike is finally admitting that he hates Matthew Cunliffe. I’ll call Culpepper for you.”

“Well, I only recently have accepted that it’s over,” Strike said. The bird was as interesting as ever.

“Corm. It’s been almost a year. You were there. You know the whole-- you know all of it,” Robin said. “How in the world--?”

“You know how it was with Charlotte,” he said dismissively, shrugging. There was a river, too. He began inspecting that.

“I suppose I know about as much as anyone,” she said, pushing his arm. “I know you’ve been hating Matthew for me… thank you for that. I needed someone to do it until I could take over.”

He looked at her, slowly. Her expression was complicated. He felt as though he saw a dozen feelings swapping places. He wanted to kiss her.

He clapped his hands. “Right! On towards the virginity-loss field, right? Or was it a loo?”

Robin really knew how to land a punch.

xxx

Dinner with the Ellacotts was painful.

They were happy, raucous, full of inside jokes. They were kind and interested in Strike and his work, Martin perhaps a tad too much. Robin’s parents shared warm glances and even grasped each other’s hands from time to time. This, Strike thought, was exactly the type of family he had always been jealous of, fantasized about. Seeing them together made him feel, acutely, the lack of it in his life. He didn’t want children, but he had wanted parents.

Strike, full and feeling a strange melancholy contentment, gave a jaw-cracking yawn as the family cleared the dishes from the table.

“Sorry mate,” he said to Martin, eyes still bright and eager. “I’m knackered. You’ll have to come stay with your sister to get the gory details another time.”

“You’ll get no details, gory or otherwise,” Robin said, glaring at Strike and sounding exactly like her mother. “I don’t need you mucking up my flat while I’m working a twelve-hour day.”

Strike grinned and mouthed _text me_ to Martin behind her back.

“We should get to sleep soon, though,” she said. “I want to leave early so we can salvage a day’s work if we can.”

“Works me to the bone, this one,” Strike said, yawning again. “I’ll head to bed now so I don’t get sacked.”

“Mean boss,” Martin said, grinning wildly at Strike. He seemed intoxicated by the older man’s checkered past.

“Partner,” Robin said, exasperation soaking her voice. “We. Are. Partners.”

Strike thought that her family probably didn’t know that the Land Rover had been re-registered to the business. Robin had thought that would give them more equal footing, both having contributed something besides labor to their agency. After everything that had happened with Laing, he had internally conceded that she was more likely to go along with his ideas if she was his partner and not his employee, since he would have to go along with more of hers. She was nothing if not headstrong. She’d drawn up a partnership agreement soon after coming back to work with him. He’d missed her too much to fight her on it.

“Time to hit the hay, partners,” Robin’s father said in an awkward American twang. Robin tried to roll her eyes but burst out laughing, happy peals ringing through the house. Strike realized he was grinning like a fool when Martin elbowed him, winked, and muttered, “I like you better than him anyway.”

Strike grinned at him. “Of course you do. I’m not a wanker.”

Robin gave Strike another complicated glance - sly, but also a bit sad. He bid everyone goodnight and asked Robin if she could show him to the bathroom. They left the other Ellacotts giggling in the kitchen, and he followed her upstairs.

“The bathroom’s just through there,” she said. Strike leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

“I wanted to apologize,” he started, but Robin cut him off.

“You’re right. You’re not a wanker. Mostly.”

He grinned again. He felt like he’d been smiling this entire trip. “Still. D’you want to talk about it? Him? Any of it?”

She looked at her intertwined hands for a moment. He couldn’t help noticing that she angled her left hand so that her ringless finger was directly in her eyeline. He wondered if she’d had a tan line where the ring had been, and if it had faded yet. It was London, after all - paleness creeps in slowly.

“I’m not sure how I feel,” she said, and then paused. She glanced towards the stairs, and then pulled Strike into her room. “Martin’s always tab hanging,” she explained. “He can be a bit pervy.” Her eyes widened as she realized the possible interpretation of what she’d said.

“Well, he’s not in here. Talk.”

Robin breathed out, long and slow. She sat on her bed and Strike stood awkwardly, wondering where in this small room his bulk would be least intrusive. She giggled at the sight of this massive man, her best friend, looking like an elephant at a tea party. She scooted to the head of the bed, pulling her legs into a diamond-shaped stretch, and gestured to the end of the bed. She noticed how gingerly Strike moved, and realized he’d had his prosthesis on since 4 A.M.

“You can-- um.” She gestured feebly. “I don’t mind.” He seemed to contemplate it for a minute, rubbing his knee.

“Is this where I’m-- I mean,” he said, looking around the room. He smiled at the poster of Destiny’s Child. “S’pose this is your room.”

Robin smiled. “Yeah, but I can sleep anywhere. Don’t worry about it.”

Strike was worried about it. He was incredibly worried about what sleeping in Robin’s bed would feel like. But he was also worried about how he would feel if he passed on the chance to do so. He started rolling up his pant leg. “You could talk, you know, while I do this,” he said. “It would make it a bit less weird.”

Robin smiled. “Well,” she said, trying to throw her mind back to the confusion she’d felt earlier. “It’s just strange. I lived here my whole life and now the whole place feels like I’ve only ever lived that one moment, leaving the church, in this town. Everything here reminds me of that. Even them,” she said, tilting her head to indicate the rest of the house. “I guess I thought I’d be a bit more past it.”

Strike nodded thoughtfully. “I felt like that about the office for a bit,” he said. “Thought far too much about that last row with Charlotte. But then, I was there, you know, most of the time” - they still didn’t speak directly about his time living in the office - “and you showed up and I almost killed you, and all the cases, it all just outweighed her, in the end.” _You outweighed her_ , he thought reflexively. He closed his eyes tightly and pretended it was from the pain in his stump. It was growing dark in the room, but it was still the first time he’d taken off his prosthesis in front of her. Not the first time she’d seen him without it. It felt different, more vulnerable, to do the action in front of her.

“Do you need ice?” Strike shook his head and opened his eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment before she continued.

“I like that,” she said, “outweighing. It seems like the counterbalance has to happen after the fact. I’m just not here that often, to replace the memories of him and--”

She suddenly and fully realized that she and Matthew had had sex in this bed, where she was sitting with Strike. Strike, who had strong hands and treated her like an adult. Strike, who had taken her to the emergency room about as many times as she had taken him. Who made her laugh as easily as she made him. She had no idea what she should do. “Outweighing…” she said softly, her hands grasping her ankles tighter.

Strike felt that his previous worry had been a light tickle compared to what was happening in his brain now. He was old enough to know better, wasn’t he? They had a good thing going. Work was picking up and they worked well together, balanced each other nicely. They had such an easy relationship. It would be a terrible idea to-- even if he had given up dating lately because no one-- even if he’d been thinking about it near daily for over a year, whether he liked to admit it or not. The room was growing darker as they spoke, and he felt the familiar pull of the friendly anonymity of darkness.

“D’you mind if I stretch my leg out? Swap me spots?” He made a complicated hand gesture and immediately felt foolish. She knew him well enough, too well, to know he was being a twat. She nodded and stood up, stretching as she did. Surely she knew what she was doing. He slid to the headboard and pulled his legs all the way onto the bed. She sat towards the end of the bed, one knee pulled up towards her face. She was sitting closer than she had been - or was she? He was taking up more space now. He felt his face burning. Of course, in her teenage bedroom, he felt like a teenager - confused as hell and chest crowded with feelings.

They sat quietly for a few minutes. Strike wondered, somewhat feverishly, if he was imagining the awkwardness in the room. He was intensely reminded of a girl he had fancied in his GCSE year. He’d had no idea how to go about any of it and had been about as awkward as when he’d grabbed Robin by the breast to keep her from falling down the stairs.

“Have you ever wondered whether you ever really loved her, or whether it was just a habit?” Robin asked, resting her cheek against her knee. “Whether it was real, or if later you’d realize that it couldn’t have been real, because of how you felt about… about someone else?”

Strike closed his eyes again. He was completely adrift. This might be completely hypothetical. She might be talking about Wardle for all he knew. Or April. And, anyway, she had said Martin eavesdropped. He realized that he had been silent for several minutes and she was still looking as though she were waiting for an answer, as though she might cry.

“If I loved her, I hated her just as much,” he said honestly. “Sometimes I think we stayed in it for the fights. Or, you know.” It was again his turn to gesture lamely. “Around that.”

“I think I did, but now I don’t. It’s hard to know whether memories are true,” she said. “There was loads about false memory, reconstructed memory, in the psychology courses.”

“I happen to know that you are an incredibly reliable witness,” Strike said. “Your evidence is worth its weight in gold. I think you can trust yourself.”

Robin sniffed, and Strike moved his hand as if to touch her, and then seemed to think better of it. He couldn’t tell if she was crying or if she’d been crying - they hadn’t bothered to turn on the light when they came in and the summer sun had faded by now. He saw her straighten her shoulders in the way she did when she was about to deliver news she thought he might not like.

“I don’t want to talk about this tomorrow,” she said haltingly, “but would you just-- could we sit together, and you put your arm on my shoulders, and neither of us talk about whether or not I’m crying?” There was an inopportune sniff. “But we never speak of this again.”

Strike thought he may have lost feeling in all of his limbs. Numbly, he patted the bed next to him, and she crawled up to fit herself under the weight of his arm. He could feel the tears wetting the front of his shirt, but she was almost motionless. He pulled his arm snugly around her and gently kissed the top of her head, hoping she wouldn’t realize that he had, or that she’d think of it as a friendly gesture. “I don’t know what you’re worried about. We never talk about anything.”

She laughed thickly, sounding snotty. “I’m disgusting.”

“True.” He patted around the bed, finally pulling the case off one of the pillows and handing it to her. “Remember? Never talking about it again.”

She laughed and loudly blew her nose. “I’m very attractive.”

“Right you are,” Strike said, hoping he sounded somewhat joking. Though his traitorous hand had squeezed her hip - her hip? How had it gotten there? - as he said it.

She leaned back against him, sighing. “Can you believe how much of my life I spent not doing what I wanted? Because of him? And my family, they were part of it too. God, why am I talking about all this?”

“It’s the dark,” he said. “Didn’t you read Lord of the Flies? The masks? What kind of education do they give you in Yorkshire?”

“A gradley one. You owe the schools of Yorkshire a great debt for creating your partner.” It was difficult to sound dignified with a stuffy nose. She half managed.

“I love when your Yorkshire comes out,” Strike said whilst yawning. Damned dark, pulling out all secrets. “I need to lie down.”

“Can I stay a while longer?” She said it plainly, as if she were asking him to pass a file. “Never speaking of it, right?”

“Right,” he said, scooting down the bed. He managed to extricate the quilt from underneath his bulk and cover himself.

She felt him moving the quilt and swiveled to seated. He was about to say a deflated goodnight when he felt her slide in under the covers. She cuddled into him, putting her head on his chest. Her hair fanned out over his shoulder. It smelled familiar and warm. He supposed it was like smelling home.

“Never speaking of this?” she said quietly.

“Never.”

xxx

Robin woke by herself, blinking in the early morning light. Had any of last night happened? It felt surreal and if they kept to their pact, she’d never be able to verify the events. Keeping it as a pleasant dream was what she was going to go with for now. At least they had only slept. It would be much harder to pretend if something... more had happened.

There was a small knock on the door. “Ready?” Strike said quietly. “Ready,” Robin replied, realizing she was still dressed. She opened the door to a neat and clean Strike - had he managed to shower already? It was barely six.

Linda had left out some pastries and a note with many XOs for both of them. Robin put on the kettle and went to get the thermoses from the Land Rover. She stood next to the car for a few minutes, breathing in the Yorkshire morning. They were never talking about it. That was the agreement. It had been dark and everything had felt secret. Yet in the soft light of day, she wondered if a line had been irrevocably crossed. She considered the question through breakfast, through packing the car, through hugging her groggy mother and promising to stop on the way back, through the first two hours of driving and the first rest stop. Strike was acting normally, as though nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had changed. The lines seemed intact, boundaries in place as ever.

She wasn’t sure that was what she wanted anymore.

xxx

Strike had waited for Robin’s breathing to slow into sleep, and had then moved as gently and quietly as his large frame allowed to the other bedroom. He undressed, then dressed again and left the house to smoke. He thought he might smoke every cigarette he could find in the next hour.

Martin had smelled the smoke through his open window and gone to join Strike.

“I was serious, you know.” He tried and failed to light a cigarette. Strike could tell Martin was not a regular smoker. He was honest enough to admit that he enjoyed the friendly hero-worship of Martin’s attention. It was like being around Robin when she had first started, minus the need to define rigid boundaries in his mind.

“Yeah, I know, you’re right creepy,” Strike said. “You should be a mortician or summat.”

Martin grinned at Strike’s attempt at Yorkshire slang. “Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I mean about Robin.”

Strike pulled hard on his cigarette, like there was something at the end he needed to ingest. He leaned back as he blew a column high into the night. “It’s not hard being less of a wanker than Matthew, mate.”

Martin tried to imitate Strike and ended up coughing roughly. Strike slapped him on the back.

“I mean we like you,” he said with a throat full of gravel. “Me, mum, dad. Matthew was alright, but he could be a bit of a prick. And they were always having rows. He felt like the mate who’s loads of fun but you don’t want around your sister, right?”

Strike grinned, glad that the only light came from the tips of the cigarettes. He knew he shouldn’t love hearing this, that he shouldn’t feel drunk, their approval mingling with the memory of Robin’s “never speaking of this.” The weight of her head on his chest, the smell of her hair. The curve of her hip under his hand.

“Right. We’re coworkers. In an office of two. Seems that might be a bad idea.”

“So you’ve thought about it!” Martin crowed triumphantly. He pumped his fists in the air.

“We’re never speaking of this, right?” Strike couldn’t help smiling at the thought of having multiple confidences with Ellacotts. These on top of the talks he’d had with Linda when she’d call to double-check Robin’s reports - he’d told Robin about those, of course, and she had rolled her eyes endlessly - but three Ellacotts trusting him felt absolutely fitting.

“Right!” Martin was practically buzzing, whether from the anticipation of what Strike might say or from what was very possibly his first encounter with nicotine.

“Robin and I are friends. You are a pervert. I am going to report you. I know people.” Strike loved this.

Martin groaned loudly. “You’re kidding me.”

“Yup. But I’m not telling you anything about your sister. I think you can keep a secret about as well as a five-year-old.”

“But there is a secret!”

Strike shushed him. “If you promise to shut up and go to bed after this, and never speak a word of this to anyone, I will tell you.”

Martin earnestly held out his hand to shake on it. Strike gripped a bit stronger than necessary. He was enjoying this too much. He had hated and been hated by everyone in Charlotte’s life - wasn’t that easier? Terrible, but easier.

“Okay. I’ve thought about it. That’s all I’m saying, because you shouldn’t want to know anything about what men think of your sister. Bloody pervert.”

“I’ll start writing my toast,” Martin said. Then, with the force of a rugby tackle, he hugged Strike tightly around his middle. “You, mate. If she doesn’t marry you, I will.”

“Good to know.”

It was strange, how many years you could go without knowing what home was, and how quickly you could know you were there.

xxx


	2. In the Sober Dark of Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please read Chapter One before this one. I'm weirdly prolific at the moment, so it might not be a terribly long wait for the next one.
> 
> For this one:  
> M/F  
> F/F  
> Rated PG but emotionally NC17 (I may have ruined my own life a little writing this one)
> 
> And, if you're wondering - yes, that is a _Riverdale_ reference.

Seeing the office inside the castle was, to be blunt, rather depressing. Robin had built up a romantic, bleak, clandestine affair with windows cut from stone in her head, and she found herself in an office that could’ve been the manager’s for a London estate.

“I know you didn’t get us out here for a lovers’ quarrel,” Strike was saying. Robin tried to bring herself back to the conversation happening between two boulders of men, dragging her gaze away from the ugly carpet as though it had added weight to her eyestalks. 

“That’s the thing, mate. You know how the army is, and there’s not one person in her unit who thought anything was happening there. Upstairs keeps throwing other work at me, I’d swear they were trying to distract me from something.”

“Strange,” said Strike, trying not to smile at Robin’s obvious disappointment. He made a mental note to ask if she’d expected the Ministry of Magic when they got back to Hardacre’s flat. It too had been oversold in the telling - Strike didn’t think that a pull-out couch and a camp bed in the sitting room counted as guest rooms.

“I’ve got to leave the room for a minute. I think I may have been careless with my files, and I probably should’ve logged out of the computer,” Hardacre said over his shoulder as he stepped through the door. “I’m going to the good tea shop, so I’ll be half an hour.”

“Bring back a scone, right?” Strike was already at the computer.

“Can we go to a pub once he kicks us out? I didn’t get much of the food my mum packed,” Robin said, giving Strike a dirty look, “because someone forgot that four sandwiches are generally meant for two or three people.”

Strike grinned, eyes quickly scanning the screen. “Get started on that, will you?” He pushed the thin folders towards Robin.

She glanced through them, brow furrowing. 

“He wasn’t kidding; it looks like they’ve hardly done anything on this.” 

Strike grunted. “That’s how it is sometimes, top brass slowing down every line of inquiry. Not sure why they think that helps their unit look less guilty.”

Robin sighed and started taking pictures with her phone. “You’re buying me fish and chips. And a beer.”

xx

Their pile of notes had been slowly pushed to the side of the table as the day had drawn into evening. Robin let out a frustrated huff and stretched her arms.

“This could be about anything,” she said. “I’d believe this was an inquiry over stolen rations, if you told me it.”

“That sounds like an episode of one of those shows Martin watches,” Strike said, squinting at his empty pint while he inventoried his faculties. “Murders and MREs--”

"Don't look but our girl just came in," Robin interrupted, casually twisting her hair into a loose chignon before noticing that the woman was looking at her. Her hair slipped, tendril by tendril, as she looked down, but some instinct told her to look back. She caught the woman’s eye and bit her lower lip slightly. Jackpot.

"We're about to get in a fight. Say something offensive."

Strike looked somewhat bewildered. "You were right, Martin is quite pervy," he said, leaning toward her with a slight air of aggression.

Robin narrowed her eyes. "Is he now," she hissed. Strike hadn't realized Robin was so good at acting - at least, he hoped this was acting.

"Yeah, definitely. I'll have the Masham cops - cop? - on alert--"

She slapped him and stormed towards the bathroom, bag in hand. Strike wasn't sure what he was feeling or what had just happened. As he rubbed his cheek, he saw that Cheryl Cooper had followed Robin to the loo.

She had just rubbed her eyes and splashed her face with water when Cheryl entered the room.

"All right? Looked like a nasty fight with your man." Cheryl held out some toilet roll.

"Not my man anymore, I'll tell you that," Robin said as she dabbed at the mascara trails on her high cheekbones. "He hates it when I flirt--"

She met the other woman's eyes in the mirror with a small smile before looking away, abashed.

"Of course I didn't mean you were--"

She flicked her eyes up to see a cocky smile on Cheryl's face.

"Why don't I buy you a drink and we can rub it in his face, eh?" Robin sniffed daintily and smiled shyly, giving an embarrassed nod.

"Cheryl." She held out a surprisingly fine-boned hand (Robin had anticipated large knuckles from years of physical training). Robin held out her own.

"Venetia."

xx

Cormoran had gone out for cigarettes once he had seen Robin getting on with Cheryl like a house on fire and now stood leisurely smoking in the warm summer evening. He glanced back through the window to see Cheryl pushing a lock of hair behind Robin's ear. He felt a sudden burning in his chest. _It's for a case, you stupid bastard,_ he thought angrily. _And it's not like you've got any claim there._ He sent Robin a quick text while considering his options. He could go into surveillance mode, but after the events that left her with a long, jagged scar on her arm, he felt anxious at the thought of leaving her totally alone with a possible murderer (especially with the lover's quarrel theory seeming less and less likely). He could go back-- the buzz of a new text broke his train of thought.

_go to H will call if 999_

He looked back at the bar to see Robin laughing flirtatiously. He wished he could get forgetting-uncomfortable-feelings drunk instead of watching his phone the rest of the night.

Robin had never been with a woman, hadn't been single in uni to go through any experimenting phases. It'd certainly be a change. She giggled.

"What do you think, gorgeous? Come back to mine for a nightcap. I'll give you cab fare home."

She let a slow smile bloom across her face. They had nearly closed the bar at this point. _Venetia Hall to the rescue._

"I really can't, I'm here on business and I've got to be up first thing." The older woman looked slightly crestfallen. "Maybe you can take me out to dinner while I'm here, though?"

She wrote her number on a napkin and impulsively kissed it, leaving a lipstick mark. Cheryl grinned.

"It's a date." They both stood and walked to the door. The night was cooler than Robin had expected: a lovely change from the bar. "You've got something on your cheek..."

Cheryl had soft eyes, soft hands, soft lips. Robin wanted to pull her dark auburn hair from its stern military bun. She felt dizzy, lips buzzing as they pulled apart. She touched her mouth gently, smiling in spite of herself. She realized Cheryl was holding a cab for her and almost skipped into it. Cheryl leaned in with one hand on the roof and the other on the open door.

"I'll call you tomorrow, yeah?" Robin's cheeks hurt from smiling. _She is a_ murder suspect, _what are you doing,_ she hissed at herself, yet the smile remained. Cheryl gave her a quick peck on the cheek before closing the door.

xx

Strike was outside the flat, pacing and smoking, when Robin got back.

"How did it--"

He squinted at her in the outer halo of the street lamp.

"You're a bit... mussed," he said slowly, taking in her tousled hair and lipstick-free mouth.

"I've got her in the bag, Corm," she said airily, giggling again.

"Are you drunk? Did you get drunk and shag a murder suspect?"

"No!" Robin's cheeks told a different story, crimson visible even in the dark.

"Oh my God." Strike ground his fingers into the bridge of his nose. "She killed a man, Robin."

" _Allegedly._ I'm just gathering intelligence," she said huffily, her high slowly draining into the gutters. "I thought we were going outside of 'approved means.'"

"Falling for a murderer is outside of any means!" He caught himself mid sentence and dropped his voice to a low growl.

"I'm not falling anywhere," Robin hissed. "She trusts me and we only kissed--"

Her face went pale.

Strike rubbed his face with both hands. He often forgot how new to the job she was.

"I don't care what you've read about spies in the war," he said, enunciating carefully, "but under no circumstances should you sleep with this woman."

Robin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She did feel a bit drunk. She wondered if she'd let things go too far.

"Can we go in and I'll tell you what I've learned?"

Strike ground out his cigarette on the gate. "Other than that you want to date a murderer? Sure."

"I don't want to date her-- are you..." _Are you jealous?_ Never speaking of it. That had been the agreement.

"Let's go in, you look cold." Strike was back to gruff. Robin sighed and followed him in.

xx

She had forgotten they were sleeping in the same room. It had seemed normal enough when they had gotten to Hardacre’s flat, small as it was, but it seemed to have gotten much smaller when their now silent argument continued into the room. Robin had taken her things to change in the bathroom when she heard a prodigious crack. She turned to see Strike sprawled on top of what had once been a functional camp bed. He attempted to bring it back to one piece, but it collapsed pathetically, as though it were too tired to be bothered.

She sighed, audibly.

"I suppose we'll sleep head to foot then." She went to help him stand but he waved her away.

"Go get ready for bed and I'll make this into a bed." He usually got rougher when he felt embarrassed. She sighed again and went into the bathroom.

Strike was making a mess of organizing the fold-out bed. He had felt more in the two days of this trip than he had in entire relationships, and he hated it. He shouldn't care if Robin kissed someone else - she wasn't wrong, it was a way to information. It was a job.

She had just looked so happy, so free coming out of the cab. He couldn't deny it any longer. He wanted to be the one that left her looking that way. She did have shit taste, though: first Matthew, and now a murderer. _Allegedly._

He finally managed to wrestle the sheets into a passing semblance of a bed as Robin emerged from the bathroom, wearing a t-shirt from one of the training courses he had put her through and joggers, her hair in messy, uneven plaits. Strike limped to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror.

"Fucking pubehead. 'Course she goes for that fit murderer over you." He did his nighttime routine aggressively, knocking into a number of items in the pocket-sized bathroom. He finally stumbled out to the couch bed, limping heavily.

He grunted as he removed the prosthesis, rubbing the stump. It was feeling hot. Robin was standing in front of him - he hadn't realized she’d moved. She was holding out a bag of frozen peas.

"This your peas offering?" He grinned goofily. She scoffed and threw the peas at him. He could feel her rolling her eyes, even with her back to him. He accidentally let out a small relieved groan.

"You're welcome."

"I'm sorry.” Strike grimaced, the frozen peas doing nothing to cool his temper. “I'm just worried. This kind of surveillance can be incredibly dangerous." 

"Yes, and I just saved us days of legwork," she said primly.

"Good, that," he grunted, shifting his bulk onto the bed, which emitted an ominous screech. "Feels like I've only got one and a quarter tonight."

Robin let out a giggle. Cormoran's chest was full of flames. He desperately needed to find an outlet, like getting evidence on Cheryl and watching as they booked her. Maybe she’d even resist arrest.

xx

Strike woke with Robin's head on his chest. _She must have always slept cuddled with Matthew_ , he thought darkly. _Nothing to do with me._ He gently extricated himself and hopped to the shower.

He stood with water pounding onto his face for a long time. By the time he had shaved and gotten trousers on, Robin had begun to stir. She was holding her head with both hands.

"Morning." He spoke a bit louder than he needed to.

"I am never drinking again."

"That's what they all say." He sat to attach the prosthesis, rocking the bed. Robin sprinted for the toilet. It seemed she'd drunk half the bar last night.

She stumbled out several minutes later, eyes bleary. He handed her paracetamol and water.

"Thanks." She grimaced as she swallowed. "Ugh."

"We're going to breakfast. Need to get some grease and salt in you." Robin seemed to waver for a moment as though she might beat a hasty retreat to the lavatory. She decided to pull a jacket over her pyjamas instead of getting dressed. 

Walking out the door felt like having a spotlight turned on her. Robin squinted against the weak sun the entire way to the greasy spoon they had passed the night before. She sat heavily in the first available seat.

"What do you remember?"

She rubbed her face fiercely with her palms, leaning weightily on the table.

"Oh, God. I remember it all, I think. I gave you a précis last night, yeah?"

"So you remember snogging our suspect, then."

"Oh, God." She took an experimental sip of tea. "At least she wants to meet again."

"We should rehearse what you'll do when she tries to get in your knickers." Their food arrived and Strike tucked in avidly. Robin looked like she might be sick. Again.

"Small bites. That's a girl." Strike grinned and expertly avoided a flying chip.

"How do we know she's going to try to get in my knickers?" She sounded as though speaking caused more pain.

"No fishing."

"Fine. I've only ever dated Matthew. I don't know how to do it."

"When are you meeting her?" Strike seemed very interested in cutting up everything on his plate.

"She's going to call today, I think." She nibbled delicately at a sausage.

"Don't agree to a date tonight, that's pretty desperate," Strike said, mock-thoughtfully. "And that way we can do a practice date tonight."

"Right." Robin wished she had sunglasses. And ear plugs. And a time machine.

xx

"Okay, remember: no matter what, you don't agree to go home with me."

Robin sighed. She still felt hungover, even though it was almost seven.

"I don't know that this is necessary."

"Tell that to your hangover." Strike grinned. They were going to have dinner, intentionally. Not because they had been at drinks or they were driving somewhere - proper dinner in a restaurant. Yes, it was for work, but he could enjoy his work from time to time.

"Fine. Can we go in? I finally feel hungry."

He pulled the door open. "After you."

They got a table in the beer garden. It was quiet, a few older couples at nearby tables.

"I think this is the first time we've been somewhere with an outdoors," Robin said, looking around at the plants. The server came with menus and Strike requested two waters.

"What, no Doom Bar?" Robin grimaced at her water. She really meant it this time: she was never drinking again.

"We're working and I don't want you to throw up on me from the smell of beer." Strike really enjoyed it too much when he could lord one over on her, she thought crossly.

"Okay, let's get to it."

"Slow down. You didn't go home with her last night, she's not going to start full throttle. Just pick something to eat."

They sat in companionable silence, the May air light and smelling of spring. After they ordered, Strike decided on his line of inquiry.

"So, Venetia. What brings you to Edinburgh?"

"Oh, talking to some companies to get taken on as their marketing consultant."

"Marketing? Seriously?"

"Venetia likes loads of cash and being with women. Carry on."

The interview went in this way for several stilted minutes, until Robin laid down her silverware in frustration.

"Look, I know how to work a cover, okay? I kept it up last night, drunk as I was. Switch to the part where I don't let you in my knickers."

Strike laughed but felt a shiver of panic along his spine.

"Well, it'll be weird if I just-- let's just have a normal conversation and I'll throw it at you at random."

"Right you are," Robin sighed, already looking fed up. "What do we talk about?"

Strike chewed thoughtfully.

"What'd you want to be when you were a kid? When you grew up?"

Robin looked faintly surprised. "This. I wanted to do this. I thought you knew that."

"You never really said, just that your parents tried to stop you from it after university."

"Yeah, well, this. Living the dream, innit."

Strike laughed. "I bet 7-year-old Robin would be pretty surprised to learn that her dream job entails seducing a woman who murdered someone."

"Allegedly!" Robin was smiling now. "You're just jealous you didn't get to do it."

Strike suddenly realized that in this game he could say what he was really thinking and not have it count.

"That's not why I'm jealous."

Robin blushed.

"Okay, well, what did you want to be?"

"Switched around a bit, can't really blame me with how much we moved.” Strike chewed for a moment, looking as though he were trying to pull a file from a locked cabinet in his mind. “I think I wanted to be a barrister. Started Oxford and all."

"One-track minds, the pair of us."

"You're not wrong. Both lifelong justice fans, both dropped out of uni because of a crime..." He dropped his gaze to hers and saw some emotion fighting to surface. He reached out and took her hand in both of his.

"What is it?" He squeezed her hand gently and began stroking small circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.

"Nothing. It's-- do you always act like this on dates?"

"Like what?" He released her hand and drank his water, wishing it were beer.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but, soft. Gentle almost."

"No, usually I'm a real dick. Mean and selfish. That's how I get my dates to come to mine." He smiled and kept his eyes on hers. She slapped his hand playfully.

Could it really be this easy? This soft, this gentle?

"What was Matthew like when you started dating?" He hated himself for bringing Matthew into it but he had suddenly felt as though he had his trouser leg pinned up - far too conscious of where others looked, wobbling self-consciously when he tried to stand.

"Well, we were in school, so your basic teen boy stuff. He never really had to try, I s'pose, because we had about two decent boys in school. And I'm tall." She sipped moderately, as if allowing that her height was a deal breaker.

"What about the girls?" Strike's smile was mischievous.

"No, that's very, very new. Not even 24 hours yet." Robin grinned. “Might just be Venetia. Who knows.”

Strike leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table.

"What was..." He spoke quietly, seductively. Robin leaned forward as well, rapt, until their faces were only six inches apart.

"The most disgusting thing I've ever made you do?"

Robin laughed and put on a thinking face, her chin tilted up so that her long neck caught the fading sunlight. Strike let himself indulge in watching her, looking at where her hair rested on her neck and shoulders. He looked back towards her face and caught her giving him a searching look.

She paused, looking at him appraisingly for a moment. 

"I'd say that thing with the dog shit. That poor thing had serious health problems."

Strike's laughter bounced around the fences of the beer garden, making the other diners look their way.

"Yeah, that was pretty bad. Caught her, though." He grinned and she smiled back.

He gazed at her face, so warm, so familiar. She blushed prettily.

"You're the one looking soft now." Strike lightly brushed her cheek. She was almost shocked at how delicate his large hands could be. She instinctively reached up and caught his hand, pressing it to her face.

"And now you're going home with her." Strike's smile was not the easy grin of just a few moments past, but one that seemed wistful, maybe melancholy. Not happy. Robin let his hand go, but didn't look away. They sat, both leaning into the table, both gazing a tad confusedly at each other, for several minutes until the waiter brought the check.

They were quiet on the walk back to the flat. Hardacre had left to cover a last-minute case in Germany that morning, and the flat lay dark and empty, almost foreboding, at the end of their walk. The empty space would need filling; the arching sky would't absorb the sparks coming off of him from inside the flat. Each time Strike’s aching knee took his weight, it was as though his body was punishing him for his weakness, his foolishness. His honesty.

They moved around each other in the flat, preparing for bed, never looking at each other but always acutely aware of where the other was. 

"Oh," said Robin as her phone chirped. "She wants to meet up tomorrow. Dinner."

Strike's stomach was suddenly made of ice. "Right. Yeah. Good."

He remembered seeing Cheryl tuck Robin's hair behind her ear and shuddered involuntarily.

"Corm? You all right?" He felt a timid hand on his arm. He tried to breathe through it, but he found himself turning to face her, found his hands sliding to the nape of her neck, gently caressing her hair. She looked steadily back at him.

He grunted and stepped roughly away, forcing his hands through his own hair.

"Cormoran," Robin began, but he cut her off.

"No. We need to stop. This is madness. We can't-- you-- I don't--"

She grabbed his shoulder and spun him to face her.

"We can," she said, and pulled herself up to his lips.

Cormoran felt the flames again, heat radiating to meet every point where he touched her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a fierce hug, her long arms around his neck, her pointed toes just brushing the carpet.

"What is this, what are we doing," he whispered into her hair, that hair that smelled of home.

"I think you know what we're doing. Are you okay? Is this okay?"

"This is all I've wanted for ages." Her hair, thick and still wavy from the plaits, was a good place to hide, from the world, from himself, from tomorrow and consequences. "But what if--"

"Corm, we could both die waiting for what ifs. You and I have both almost died about thirty times since I came to you."

He laughed shakily. She gently pulled herself from his arms and sat on the edge of the bed. He was covering his face again. None of this was how it had been before, with other women. She was his best friend, his partner, and he had loved her far longer than he let on or admitted to himself. He liked her, respected her. Everything felt worth the work, even forgiveness, never his strong suit. They both wanted it to work.

_Could it work?_

She hadn't said anything, just sat watching his moral quandary unfold.

"Okay," he said after several minutes. "Okay. I can't-- not here. Not tonight. Can we just, never speaking of it again?"

Robin smiled and nodded. She laid down and rolled on her side to watch him remove his prosthesis.

"Less complicated than I would've thought," she said, inspecting the device. "Hmm. Seems doable."

Strike had no idea what she was talking about, but he didn't really care. All he wanted was to hold her as she fell asleep.

xx

He dreamt of nothing and yet woke disbelieving. Here she was, still: her hand curled into the front of his shirt, the top of her head just grazing the underside of his chin. He didn’t want to let himself be used to this. He felt as though he were back in that transport, but this time he didn’t have any sense of when he would get blown up. He played timidly with the ends of her long shining hair, trying not to wake her. She began to stir anyway.

“Hey.” She blinked slowly with heavy-lidded eyes, propping her chin on the hand that had been in his shirt. Had he always known how to breathe? He must have known at some point, when her face had been farther, when she wasn’t made silken by sleep. 

“You’ve got lines on your face,” he said, moving as if to trace them before losing his nerve. She grinned and leaned her face towards him.

“Bathroom.”

He jumped up with a start and immediately fell to the ground. He still did this, sometimes - forgot he was missing a piece. It hadn’t happened for a year or more before today. She leaned over the edge of the bed, her chest buoyed on her folded arms.

“You want a hand?” 

“No, no. I’m fine. Fine.” Strike had rarely felt flustered: anger was his primary emotional fault. He struggled to stand and hopped along the back of the couch to the bathroom, where he sat hard on the edge of the bath. _What was I thinking? What have I done?_ His mind had glossed over Robin’s initiation and had recast himself as a stalker Quasimodo. She would quit now, he was sure of it. She would leave him and be wildly successful, and he would shrivel into an even angrier old man, plagued with longing and regret. There was a timid knock on the door.

“Corm-- could we talk about this please? I want… just, please come out.”

“In a minute.” He gripped the sink, stood unsteadily, and ran his head under the cold tap for a few minutes.

Robin leaned on the wall next to the door. She had no idea what to think. So many strange and wonderful things had happened since arriving in Edinburgh; she wondered if they would still exist in her bedsit back in London, or if it were a fever dream. 

She wasn’t completely sure whether either of the kisses were a good idea now, her bleary eyes seeing things a bit clearer. She was on point of leaving the flat when the bathroom door finally opened.

“Okay. I don’t know what to say.” Strike hopped back to the bed where his prosthesis lay waiting. “You say something. You’re the psychologist.”

“I think we should wait until we get back to London to… explore this any further. It’s too close in this flat. But I want to make perfectly clear that I wanted to do what I-- I wanted to kiss you. I have, I think, for a while. That was me.”

Strike wondered if he had any legs at all. He was completely at sea, and if the sea asked him to drown, he would. He stared numbly at the prosthesis, his hands too large suddenly to attach it, somehow. He wondered how often a person was allowed to cover their face with their hands in a two-day period. He felt, rather than saw, Robin crouch to pick up the prosthesis. Her hands worked gently as she expertly fitted it onto his leg. 

“Watched some videos,” she said faux-casually. He was oddly touched somewhere in the depths of his embarrassment. She touched his knee lightly with a platonic double tap. “Good as gold.”

Strike had had doctors clinically poke and lovers awkwardly caress his stump many times, but Robin’s casual friendliness about it was incredibly novel. It was as though she had bent to tie his shoe when he was carrying a heavy load. 

_I love her._

_Fuck._

xx


	3. Twig and Berries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is almost certainly going to make you all kind of hate me, but I promise the next one will have you loving me again ;)
> 
> CN: rape - description

Robin’s last first date had been at the Masham Town Hall for a cheap movie when she was fifteen. She knew that this was a job, but she couldn’t help feeling incredibly nervous as she fiddled with her hair in the mirror.

 

Strike was poring over their preliminary case file and trying not to notice Robin’s flustered energy. He didn’t want to acknowledge the excitement that she was trying to pass off as anxiety about keeping her cover. He knew that they had agreed not to discuss anything until they got back to London, but he couldn’t help feeling that he may be losing his chance. 

 

“I feel silly asking, but, er, as you’re here, should I wear my hair up or down?” Robin was frowning slightly at herself, gathering up her hair and releasing it over and over, so smoothly that she might have been a machine designed for this purpose. 

 

“Er… down,” Strike grunted noncommittally. He didn’t want to be doing this. He really didn’t want her to ask any follow up questions. He didn’t want to notice her hair falling around her shoulders, didn’t want the image of Cheryl’s long fingers pushing it behind Robin’s ear that night at the bar to force itself front and center, over and over again.

 

Strike’s palpable mood was making Robin feel, impossibly, even more nervous. She knew this must be torture for him, and couldn’t help feeling guilty at the glimmer of excitement pulling her focus. She, too, was nursing confusion and not a little distress about their romantic detente; at the same time, she had never felt herself to be the clear lead on a case before and it was intoxicating. She had no idea what she’d feel when she saw Cheryl again. She had been so drunk that night - it was probably nothing, just the excitement of the case and the influence of the fourth glass of wine. 

 

“Right, then. I’m off,” Robin said, grasping her bag tightly with both hands, twisting it slightly. “Don’t want to be late.”

 

“Right,” Strike said. Their conversations had been stilted, awkward, since the kiss, or more accurately, the decision to table it till London. He cursed inwardly, at least the fiftieth time in 24 hours, at his impulsivity, his foolishness. Hadn’t he known he would ruin the one good thing he had?  _ This is why you can’t have nice things _ . Somehow that had been Lucy’s voice. He shuddered to think what she would say when she found out. Probably call him a tosser for driving away Robin, who she loved, who everyone loved. He heard her sigh and lifted his head to watch her walk away from him, out the door and onto the street. He wondered, slightly irrationally, if she was walking away for the last time.

 

xx

 

Robin had arrived a few minutes early to the restaurant and was surprised to see Cheryl already waiting near the bar. She smoothed her hair as she took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She couldn’t drink tonight and forget about the case again. Not that she had forgotten about the case before, just that she had stopped asking useful questions. Maybe she had forgotten a little bit.

 

Cheryl’s face lit up as she took in Robin. 

 

“Don’t you look a picture!” She leaned in to kiss Robin’s cheek. “Shall we eat?”

 

“You look-- quite nice also,” Robin said, smiling nervously. She was glad she had her bag, because she had no other idea of what to do with her hands. Did people really do this regularly? Meet a stranger, chat in a bar, get dinner? She’d known Matthew for ages before they started dating, and Strike - well, they weren’t dating, were they, but in any event he’d grabbed her breast before he knew her name. She didn’t really have context for--  _ for normal, regular-people dating _ , she mused. 

 

They sat and Robin immediately clutched a menu. Cheryl laughed.

 

“A bit nervous, are we?” she said, smiling at Robin’s menu death grip.

 

“I’m sorry, I just haven’t been on a first date since I was-- well, not for a very long time,” Robin said, nerves making her voice a bit tighter and brighter than usual.

 

“Let’s not call it a date, then. Let’s just call it dinner,” Cheryl said, winking in a friendly manner. Robin felt her shoulders loosen slightly. 

 

“Not that I don’t want this to be--” she started, but Cheryl raised her hand to stop Robin’s apologetic voice.

 

“You’re fresh out of a relationship, that’s a lot of pressure for anyone,” Cheryl said. “We’re just having a friendly dinner, and if that turns into something… a bit more than friendly, that’s fine too.” She smiled warmly at Robin, who had visibly relaxed.

 

“Thank you,” Robin said quietly. “Most people aren’t quite as nice as all that when I-- well, let’s just say I haven’t had the best luck with men lately, as you witnessed.”

 

“We have that in common,” Cheryl joked, nudging Robin’s arm gently. “Though I’m not really looking for men. But don’t worry, I don’t believe in gold stars.” 

 

Robin smiled as though she had gotten the joke. Should she be looking on Google for lesbian jokes? Why hadn’t she thought of this before? She shook her head as though clearing something from her mental queue. 

 

“Right! Enough of that. Let’s talk about you, I think we covered plenty of me the other night,” Robin said, flipping over her menu. The waiter was almost frighteningly prompt, and left with their orders. 

 

“What do you want to know?” Cheryl sipped the whiskey she had brought from the bar, ice clinking gently.

 

“Let’s see… Well, I suppose I don’t even know what business you’re in. That’s rather embarrassing of me,” Robin said, acting flustered. She felt like she had regained some of the control she had been missing in the build-up to the date, helped in part by Cheryl’s kindness. She found herself feeling somewhat grateful for the other woman’s laissez-faire attitude and worked to marshal herself back into investigator mode. She noticed that Cheryl was leaning in slightly and felt gratified. Whatever mistakes Strike thought she had made, she had definitely gained some trust.

 

“I’m in the army, actually. Lieutenant.” She smiled at Robin’s impressed look. 

 

“Is it difficult? Being--”

 

“Being gay in the army? Not as much anymore. At the beginning of my career, it was very, very hard, but that was… seventeen years ago, I think. I’ve been in since I finished at Edinburgh back in… well, I’m old, is what I’m getting at.” She winked at Robin. 

 

“I’ve always been drawn to people a bit older than me,” Robin said, hoping she didn’t appear as flustered as she felt, what with Strike immediately popping into her head. She didn’t want to think about him now, especially not with Cheryl across the table. She needed to remember to find somewhere to be alone to think about everything. “What did you study in university?”

 

The conversation meandered along pleasantly enough, though Robin felt a bit frustrated at not being able to find a conversational inlet that related back to the crime. The murder hadn’t made the papers, so she couldn’t pretend to have seen anything about it. She didn’t want to push too hard and spook Cheryl, but she also didn’t want to go back to Strike without having made some kind of progress. A small thought popped up during her Scotch pie and grew while she ate a few too many wonderfully buttery shortbread biscuits (which Cheryl ordered a second plate of for Robin to take home). It blossomed as Cheryl insisted on paying.

 

“Won’t you walk me home?” Robin asked as they stood from the table. “It’s a bit far but it’s such a nice night.”

 

“Of course! Don’t forget your shortbread,” she said, handing the box to Robin. “Let’s go.”

 

They walked in companionable silence for a few minutes, Cheryl occasionally pointing out local landmarks. Robin was reminded of showing Masham to Strike and again shook her head quickly. Cheryl looked at her expectantly.

 

“I’m sorry, it’s just-- I keep being reminded of my-- the man, from the other night. It’s making me feel like I’m not completely here, but I want to be,” Robin said haltingly, half-feigning embarrassment. Cheryl took the bait and Robin’s hand. 

 

“Do you want to talk about it? I don’t mind,” Cheryl said. Robin shook her head, tightening her hold on Cheryl’s hand experimentally. 

 

“Would you just-- can you tell me something? Anything, just to bring me round.”

 

“Anything? Hmm. I broke my arm parachuting from a helicopter when I was 26. No, that’s not big enough to distract you. Let me think… If we’re being really honest, I can tell you something, but - ” Cheryl paused sadly - “I think you won’t like me much anymore.”

 

“What is it?” Robin kept her face impassive, though inside she was full of electricity. Could this be it?

 

“I cheated on someone I loved very much. Fairly recently, actually,” Cheryl said, looking at the ground, still grasping Robin’s hand. Robin couldn’t help it: she pulled away from Cheryl as though she had been slapped. She stopped walking and pulled Cheryl next to a closed clothes shop, taking up as little of the sidewalk as possible. 

 

“I need to hear this,” Robin said evenly, “before I can do anything else with you.”

 

“I was with Eileen for a little over a year when it happened. I was out drinking with some officers in my unit, and I ended up in bed with my captain, of all people. I have no idea how it happened - I’d never even kissed a man, before that…” Robin was shocked to see that Cheryl was crying.

 

“What do you mean,” Robin said slowly, carefully, “that you don’t know how it happened?”

 

“I must’ve had too much to drink,” Cheryl said. “I don’t remember much. I didn’t think I’d been drinking that much, but I hadn’t been out with the officers in a few months and we tend to get properly drunk. Maybe my tolerance was just low.”

 

“Cheryl,” Robin said quietly. “Cheryl, I think you were raped.”

 

“No,” Cheryl said hotly. “ _ I _ cheated on my girlfriend.  _ I  _ made the mistake.  _ I’m  _ the horrible drunken slag. And anyway, he’s dead--” Cheryl slapped her hand over her mouth so hard Robin thought it would leave a mark.

 

“He’s-- what? Are you joking?” Robin didn’t want to know more. If this woman had killed her rapist, Robin certainly didn’t want to be the one who sent her to prison. She wished she could go back in time, back to the restaurant where she could’ve just gone home with no information. 

 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Cheryl said, straightening her shoulders. “I should go. You take this cab.” She hailed it robotically.

 

“Cheryl--”

 

“Good night, Venetia.”

 

xx

 

“You have to admit, this looks bad,” Strike said, rubbing his eyes. Robin had been pacing the room for almost two hours - it had taken the entire first hour to convince her to tell him what had happened. The last time she had been this angry had been about Brockbank, and he was not fool enough to abandon her to her own devices again. 

 

“I don’t care how it looks. We’re not handing this over until we know what it means.” Robin was nearly shouting.

 

“Okay, alright? We’ll sit on this a few days,” Strike said, collapsing back onto the rickety fold-out bed. He was tired, and he was out of shortbread. He just wanted to go to sleep. Eyes closed, he could still feel the anger pouring off Robin in sheets as she paced furiously. 

 

“Robin,” Strike said, and patted the bed. “We’ll figure out next steps in the morning. I promise I won’t say anything to Hardacre until we know more.”

 

She sat forcefully, so forcefully that the foot of the bed snapped up from the floor and threatened to eat them both. She fell back so they were laying side by side, three feet on the floor. 

 

“You knew you’d get one eventually,” Strike said quietly. He considered reaching for her hand, but wasn’t sure if that went against their agreement. “It’s part of the job, that’s all.”

 

Robin was silent for a few minutes. When she spoke, her voice was subdued, almost tired.

 

“I didn’t think she’d be so nice.”

 

“Sometimes murderers are nice people,” Strike said, touching the back of her hand gently with his fingertip. “You can’t help who your suspect is. They can’t all be Laing.” 

 

Robin groaned and rolled to face Strike. He turned his face towards her, unwilling to broach any further intimacies.

 

“And, you never know,” Strike said, threading his fingers together to have something to do with his hands, “she could always turn out to be a puppy torturer.”

 

Strike smiled as Robin let loose a peal of laughter, almost as loud as the anger had been before.

 

“Let’s hope so,” she said, bringing her hand up to his face, but thinking better of it at the last minute. Strike was familiar with phantom limbs, but he hadn’t realized they could be someone else’s. 

 

xx

 

They had fallen asleep like that, Robin curled gently towards Strike, and he woke with both knees stiff. As well as something else. He tried to get up without waking her, but she stirred as soon as he moved. He snatched the nearest pillow, which happened to be the one under her head. She gave a small shriek as her face crashed into the mattress. Face burning, he wondered if Hardacre would be cross with him if he disappeared from the face of the earth in the next five minutes. 

 

Robin sat up, transferring the sleep from her eyes into her hair, which was adorably mussed. Strike applied a bit more force to his lap pillow. She yawned and glared at him.

 

“What was that-- oh,” she said, glancing towards the pillow. “Oh.”

 

Strike grimaced, wishing he had just hopped for the shower. At least that would’ve ended somewhat positively, though he would’ve felt just as embarrassed. “Um, yeah. Well. It’s morning.”

 

“Right. Right.” Robin sprang out of bed and into the kitchenette. “Tea? Yes. I’ll make tea.”

 

She busied herself with the kettle, pointedly turning her back on Strike. Quietly thankful, he hopped quickly towards the bathroom, but slipped and sprawled face down. He let out a terrible roar. He felt as if he had been hit with a hammer - no, Mjölnir. He had definitely been castrated by Thor. That was what this feeling was. He felt Robin’s worried hand on his back.

 

“NO. No. Go away. Go over there,” he said, grimacing through the pain. He had curled instinctively into the fetal position.  _ This is how I die _ , he thought. 

 

He heard Robin scurry away and open the fridge, but then heard her coming back towards him, felt her kneeling next to him. He was trying to form words that weren’t curses when he felt sweet, wonderful cold on his knob. He reached down to find a bag of frozen peas and Robin’s steady hand. They stayed that way for a while, Strike’s hand resting on top of Robin’s on top of the peas, until he finally rolled onto his back, the pain having subsided enough for him to think. Robin adjusted her body so that she was leaning on Strike’s chest, hips turned away from his throbbing member, chin resting on folded hands. Strike brought one hand behind his head and the other to her waist - he felt that his embarrassment warranted him this small act of affection. Robin jokingly proffered the pillow and slid it under his head. Their faces were so close now, Robin’s hair forming a small cave. She leaned towards him, and--

 

“OW. NO. FUCK. NO.” Strike clamshelled, smacking Robin in the face with his forehead. She cursed loudly, extricated herself and went to get the frozen hamburger from the freezer. 

 

“I s’pose I should be flattered, then,” Robin said, covering her cheek with the package of beef. 

 

“Very,” Strike said, breathing laboriously. “This seems inauspicious.”

 

They both laughed and he immediately groaned, which made her laugh more. 

 

xx

 

They decided, both being injured and having hit a bit of a wall after Cheryl’s confession, to take the day off. Robin hadn’t had a proper day off since the wedding, and while it was somewhat marred by the impressive bruise on her cheek and Strike’s near-literal emasculation, she was still determined to enjoy it. She easily convinced Strike to spend the day in an airy beer garden a short walk from Hardacre’s flat, and she sat, legs stretched long under the table, with her face in the fleeting sun. 

 

“We should tell people we’re in a fight club,” she said, basking in the few rays struggling through the grey day. 

 

“Bloody hated that movie,” Strike scoffed, surreptitiously holding his ice water in his lap. “If I wanted to see someone punch themselves in the face, I’d do it myself.”

 

“You should be a film critic,” Robin said. Strike laughed gently. They’d been so busy with surveillance lately, he couldn’t remember the last time he and Robin had done anything this leisurely. He thought it odd that this day was better than most he had spent with Charlotte. At least this injury was an accident, and he’d gotten frozen peas after instead of threats. He was embarrassed that he had thought Charlotte was his ceiling, when Robin was the sky. 

 

“We should do this more,” Robin said lazily, sipping a glass of rosé (“This is vacation wine,” she’d told Strike). “I don’t want to work less, but we should do this more.”

 

“Maybe we should start writing days off into our surveillance contracts,” Strike mused, reaching for his pint. “I bet Farmer John would love that. Really respect our space.”

 

Robin laughed, then screwed up her face in a mock-stern expression. “No work talk! If you don’t get a day off for, uh, you know, then when do you?”

 

Robin leaned back, fingers laced behind her head, and closed her eyes, but cracked one eyelid to watch Strike for a moment. He would never be considered handsome like Matthew, but he was an acquired taste that, once acquired, left the Matthews of the world tasting only of fondant, never of cake. She watched his face shift into a lazy grin as he noticed her noticing him. There was something so adult about her feelings for Strike. She had loved Matthew, but he had been her first love, and their relationship had always been tinged with the fever of teenagedom. She had loved that about their love, but this new feeling was… safer, in a way that made the intimacy deeper. She couldn’t help comparing them, weighing one against the other. Strike didn’t always come out well in these measurements, but he won more often now than he had a year ago, whether or not she had admitted she was checking then. There was one measurement in particular that she was jittery in anticipation of testing out… Matthew had made that a high bar, to be sure. But Strike was so rough, so strong, so coarse - she could admit that she had been incredibly tempted that morning, before things went slapstick. She wasn’t  _ glad  _ he had been grievously injured, but she was a bit relieved she hadn’t had to make the decision. Yet. 

 

“I think we should go back to London,” Strike said. “Can’t have your lady love seeing you with that shiner.”

 

Robin sighed. “I think you’re right. She hasn’t texted me back yet. I’ll tell her my trip got cut short but that I’ll be back… what, next week? Later this month? When do you think?”

 

“Tell her your boss only gives you a few days’ notice before trips,” Strike said after a pause. “We’ll see if she’s still interested in a week or if she’s written you off because of last night.” 

 

“I hope not,” Robin said, pulling her hair over one shoulder and petting it absent-mindedly. “I have absolutely no bleeding idea how we’ll get moving without her.”

 

Strike quietly thought it likely that Cheryl had killed her rapist, and thought that Robin thought so, too. He couldn’t blame her for understanding that motive, and he didn’t want to try to reason with her about justice until she’d had a few days to think on her own.  _ There’s a chance it’s not her,  _ he thought,  _ though not much of one. _ Neither Hardacre nor their research had suggested other leads so far. Multiple people had reported seeing them fight on the night in question. He’d had no family to speak of, no jealous lover. It didn’t look good for Cheryl. 

 

“I’ll let Hardacre know what the plan is,” Strike said, pulling out his phone and his cigarettes. “Call your mother, tell her we’ll be staying there tonight. We can make it by dinner if we leave by three.”

 

xx

 

Martin was waiting in the driveway when they got to Robin’s house. Strike grinned at Robin’s loud “ugh” and rolled eyes. He felt even more at home here than he had only a few days ago, though it seemed like ages since they’d been here, since “never speaking of it.” He winked at Martin as they walked in the house and was pleased to get the exact reaction he had hoped to elicit.

 

“Seriously?! Yes!” Martin held out his hand for a high five and Strike, feeling drunk, reciprocated. 

 

“Almost certainly not what you’re thinking, you creep,” he said to the younger man, grinning and nodding back towards the door with his cigarettes in hand. Robin had already been hijacked by her mother and her bruise was being cooed over in the kitchen. Strike wondered absently how she would explain it to her mother.

 

“But something!” Martin crowed triumphantly. “Even more something than you thinking about it!”

 

“Don’t make this weird,” Strike said, though his grin belied his stern voice. “I just wanted to tell someone and nobody would ever believe anything  _ you _ said, so it’s basically telling the wind.”

 

“So when’s the wedding?” Martin was doing a better job at pretending he knew how to smoke this time; Strike was mildly concerned that he had sparked a new habit. 

 

“Wouldn’t say that around Robin,” Strike said, pulling on his cigarette. “Kind of think she might not be so keen on weddings right now.”

 

“But  _ you _ might be,” Martin said, grinning and flicking ash all over his own shirt. 

 

“If I tell you something, will you swear to go inside, have dinner, and never speak of it again?”

 

Martin nodded eagerly. Here was an Ellacott who could do nothing but stoke Strike’s ego, it seemed.

 

“I’m mad about your sister, mate. I think I actually have a chance.” Strike ground out his cigarette and flicked it into the bin waiting by the road.

 

Martin laughed and ran towards the house. “ROBIN!” Strike ran after him, but the young man was much faster. 

 

He shouted after Martin. “I’ll kill you!” He skidded into the kitchen where his favorite Ellacotts sat, looking like cats who had each caught a canary.

 

“Don’t listen to anything he says, he’s an unreliable witness,” Strike said, landing heavily in a chair.

 

“He just said he was tricking you into running,” Robin said, eyes sparkling. “I told him you run plenty.”

 

Strike glared at Martin but laughed almost immediately. He couldn’t help loving these people. They were genuine and weird and lovely. It scared him a little - with Charlotte, all he stood to lose was the woman herself. He didn’t trust that he wouldn’t ruin things with Robin, that it wouldn’t all end before it started. 

 

But for now, he’d let himself enjoy this dinner and allow his imagination to consider what Christmas could be with the Ellacotts.

 

xx


	4. Halfway to London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short but exactly what you were hoping for probably

Strike had thought it both too tempting and too strange to be seen entering Robin’s room that night and lightly cursed himself as he lay alone, staring at the ceiling of her brother’s room. He got up, pulled on his trousers, and went outside for a smoke. 

He saw moonlight glinting off of bright rose gold hair. His pulse quickened - though it had only been an hour since they went to bed, it had felt like ages. She turned as she heard his footsteps and smiled.

“Thought you might be interested in seeing a certain field on the Robin Ellacott New Origins tour,” she said, holding her hand out towards Strike. He felt as if all his blood left his body and pounded back all at once. He swallowed and took her hand.

She led him down a paved road, then a gravel road, and finally turned onto a dirt road. She turned to walk backwards into the field and grasped his other hand. He felt as though his feet weren’t quite meeting the ground. The field had been recently plowed and rows of soft earth lay on either side of their footpath. 

“Robin,” Strike whispered, “I don’t think I’m, er, recovered--”

“Good thing we’re only halfway to London then,” she said with a wicked smile. She pulled his arms tightly behind her waist and slid her hands up his arms to grip the back of his neck. His entire body buzzed as her lips met his, softly, seductively. The pain in his groin almost felt good, an ache that wanted to be soothed.

xx

Robin tasted of Christmas morning, of a full English breakfast after a night of surveillance, of the first cigarette after hours of interrogation. The field was replete with the promise of tiny green points slowly erupting, and Strike couldn’t help but feel poetic about the promise of new things as he lay stroking Robin’s long hair. Though it had only been minutes ago, he had already replayed certain moments - the arching of her spine, a small gasp, fingers digging into his shoulder - a thousand times or more. 

“You’re good at that,” Robin said. Strike could hear the smile in her voice. He laughed.

“Yes, er, well,” Strike said, his tongue somehow not loosened after the evening’s activities, “you, er, make it very, ah, enjoyable--”

Robin laughed loudly but clapped her hand over her mouth. “Shit. We can’t wake up the Robinsons.”

“What?” Strike started. “Are we-- are we near someone’s  _ house? _ I thought we were in the middle of nowhere.”

“We’re a bit away, but I’d rather not have him come out with his shotgun.” She laughed at the flustered way Strike whipped his head from side to side. “Haven’t spent much time in the country, have you?”

Strike pulled her up to sitting with him and looked towards the sky. The moon was more than halfway through the sky and they were supposed to be driving tomorrow-- today, he supposed.

“We should get to bed,” he said, brushing dirt off her back. She nodded mock-seriously and helped him stand. 

“Yes. Bed.” She stretched, pushing one hip into Strike’s. “We may even sleep,” she added devilishly, twining her fingers into his. Strike couldn’t help the stupid grin that spread over his face and through his entire body. 

xx


	5. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

Cheryl knelt in front of a small makeshift altar in the corner of her bedroom, praying feverishly, her cross clutched inverted in her desperate hands. She started at the gentle touch of a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh, it’s you,” she breathed, gazing up from the floor at the woman standing behind her, her pose reverent and beatific. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you,” the woman said, pulling Cheryl to sit on the hard bed next to her. “I know this has been a terrible ordeal for you.”

“You said I’d be free, you said--”

“And you will be,” the woman said, cupping Cheryl’s face in her olive-skinned hand. “All of my girls go free, I promise you. It might just be a bit rocky at first, but you have my word.”

Cheryl’s eyes glittered with grateful tears as she threw her arms around the woman. 

“How can I ever repay you?” Her voice was thick.

“I’ve already gotten my reward,” the woman murmured into Cheryl’s hair as she stroked it, motherly and predatory at once. “I always get what I need.”


	6. Regrets, I've Had a Few (But Then Again...)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as a note to everybody: I'm going to start getting a bit more AU about all this in the next few chapters, so just ready yourselves I guess? This one is just fun though.

Strike had often felt awkward around Robin, but he now thought nostalgically of when she had pointed out a missed button on his shirt: being in the office together was torture. He had known the boundaries before Masham, had rigidly enforced them in his own mind; but now, after everything that had happened…

They hadn’t spoken about the night in the field the next morning, instead quietly getting on the highway after a fond farewell to the Ellacotts, Martin enthusiastically slapping Strike on the back as though he knew and approved of the previous night’s activities, Linda piling food into their arms as they loaded the Land Rover. Strike thought of things to say a thousand times, but stopped himself each time as he looked at Robin’s relaxed profile as she passed lorries and school buses. He had no idea what to say and as the day grew, he felt more and more pressure to say  _ something _ .

“That was--”; he stopped, panicking slightly.  _ Fun? Wonderful? The only thing I’ve wanted to do for the past year? Well,  _ one  _ of the only things... _

Robin smiled indulgently, as though he were a child who had remembered all his lines in the school play. He felt rebuffed and sat back with a small huff.

“Shall we stop for lunch?” Robin was already pulling onto the exit ramp, signaling towards the McDonald’s past the stoplight. “I could use a stretch.”

Strike’s gut felt the way his knee did after falling down a flight of stairs - tender and pulsating painfully. He had been with women before, hadn’t he? He’d managed to wake up next to Charlotte for years and then form complete sentences. He’d read at bloody Oxford and yet, when it came to Robin and their night together, it was as though he had just learned English. Would she want him in London? Had everything just been the trip?

Back in the office, he stumbled, lost track of sentences, missed her words for the sight of her hair and the memory of it gleaming in the moonlight. Could he touch her? Could they kiss? He regretted few things in his storied life, but he thought he might regret crossing the line that made his most valued friendship feel so stilted.

xx

Robin was perfectly aware of how many times the Italian suit had made an appearance over the last year and was likewise aware of how short-lived those dalliances had been. Strike was acting as though the past two years hadn’t happened, as though she were a stranger; walking on eggshells where once there had been solid ground. She had felt it happening as they got closer to London, as though the city itself imposed the boundary between them. She had spent the last two days being hyper-conscious of his presence and absence, feeling incredibly off-balanced by his frankly bizarre behavior.

She was leaning over the computer to pick up a file and felt rather than saw his gaze travel down her form. She reached up and slowly swept her hair over her left shoulder, leaving her neck exposed, and was gratified to hear a small but distinct intake of breath. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stood to face him.

“What are we doing?” She asked this in the same matter-of-fact tone that she used to ask him case details or about the state of his office before a client meeting.

“What are we-- that is to-- well, we--” Strike audibly panicked.

She sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“Do you want to do this or not?”

“I-- we-- um--”

“Cormoran. Answer me.” Her look would not have been out of place on a stern schoolteacher. 

Strike took a gulp of air, feeling an unfamiliar fluttering in his chest.

“I want,” he said slowly, willing the words to sit quietly in their proper spots, “to try-- but what if…”

Robin raised a hand and quickly earned his grateful silence. 

“First, we have worked together, on work that is the most important thing to both of us, for two years; that is not the sort of thing that one night, or multiple nights, can obliterate.” She spoke in the same measured tone in which she spoke to the police and Strike smiled at her familiar and welcome composure. “Second, I think we both know that this” - she gestured to the two of them - “has been a long time coming. Third, not having this conversation is making our working relationship suffer; we should have had it days ago.”

“Right, then. Let’s have it,” he said, clapping his hands together to dispel some of his nerves. 

“Good. What do you want?” she said, succinct as ever.

“I-- I mean, that is to say--”

“Because I think we need to give this a chance,” she said, rescuing him from his beleaguered response. “I also think we don’t have any more clients coming in today.”    


She held out her hand experimentally. “How do you feel about a pint?”

xx

Strike kept feeling rushes of feelings for Robin this evening - gratitude, youthful glee, gratitude again, and one that made him shift awkwardly on the hard bar stool of the Tottenham. He had been feeling like an ox trying to put on a hat and she had pulled him out of his head and into this comfortable old pub. He realized that she was looking at him expectantly.

“Er-- what was it we were talking about?” He surreptitiously readjusted his legs; honestly, since letting himself be honest about these feelings, he might as well have been in sixth form again, for all the control he had over his body.

“I think we need some rules,” Robin said, sipping a glass of white wine sedately. She looked amused, as though she had been trying to get him to listen to her for more than a moment. He had the good manners to feel a bit abashed at that realization.

“What sort of rules?” Cormoran had thought it wise to pace himself on his pint of Doom Bar, but badly wanted to go back to the bar for another. 

“Well, I mean, we can’t exactly be shagging in the office when we’ve got clients-- honestly,” she said exasperatedly, as he had choked on his lager at “shagging.” “We have a business to run, and that should be our first priority.”

Strike nodded slowly, regarding her closely. The job had been one of the many reasons he and Charlotte had split over and over, as well as the end of many other, lesser relationships. He felt gratified that Robin felt the same way as he did about their nearly-past-fledgling business, and more than a little amused that that had been her first thought. 

“Right, no shagging in the office,” he said, holding up one finger. He paused for a moment, considering. “Are there other rules?”

She sat in earnest thoughtfulness for a moment. “I can’t think of any at the moment,” she said. “I think we should keep ourselves open to more rules as they occur to us, though.”

“Fair enough,” said Strike, suddenly realizing that having sex had not been made completely off-limits. “D’you want to get a kebab, or--”

Robin laughed outright. “I had thought we might work a bit more for our dinner,” she said mischievously. Strike stifled a groan and wondered how he was going to walk out of the pub without getting an indecency charge.


End file.
